An HTC Android that boots Windows Phone? Microsoft wants it to happen

HTC is struggling to stay afloat in the smartphone market while Microsoft’s Windows Phone platform can’t seem to gain a foothold, either. Is there a solution that could benefit both? According to Microsoft, one solution might be to include the Windows Phone operating system on the Taiwanese manufacturers Android handsets. So eager to see this happen, they are willing to reduce or waive any associated licensing fees, according to reports.

The logistics of this aren’t exactly clear. Is Microsoft pushing for a dual-boot HTC One that can run both Android and Windows Phone out of the box? Or are they seeking Windows Phone-only versions of HTC’s more popular hardware. HTC was one of the first companies to release devices build around Microsoft’s mobile platform, but they haven’t partnered on a new handset since early in the summer. Most indications are that HTC has no plans to release future Windows Phone devices.

Microsoft wants to make their platform, which holds a 3.7- percent market share, appealing to OEMs, especially after acquiring their own hardware arm from Nokia. Licensing fees (or lack thereof) that rival Android might be one way to do this. Will HTC bite? Something tells me they already have enough on their plate attempting to turn around their financial outlook, but even a flailing HTC might be Microsoft’s best option if they hope to make Windows Phone a serious contender.

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HTC really want to turn things around? Fire whomever does their marketing and then kiss a lot of ass to get the next Nexus. Make it with your great hardware as a test bed and then learn from working closely with Google on it to make Sense better.

Disclosure: I really dont care if sense gets better, I just want a completely AOSP One without hardware buttons.

HeatFan441

I disagree. HTC already made a quality product with the HTC One. The only thing that’s a problem is the lack of marketing. Virtual nexus buttons are screen eaters.

Unorthodox

“Virtual nexus buttons are screen eaters.” Totally. And they always get in the way when I want to drift in Need For Speed Most Wanted. These buttons are the pure frustration.

ChristianMcC

They’re at the landscape bottom on nexus tablets, where I do most of my gaming, so no problem there. The nice thing about no hardware buttons on a phone is less bezel and I personally have less accidental clicks, versus the capacitive bezel buttons. If they are on screen the Dev also has the option to make them disappear in application, though sadly many don’t take advantage.

Ryan Stewart

Except when applications hide them. Also they at least have a logical implementation compared to HTCs.

HeatFan441

But what’s not logical with HTC’s? HTC has a perfect blend imo. Their phone is not super big or super small. I mean the phone has some of the rarest stuff on the market. Dual front speakers with Audio and a premium feel at the same time? I think it’s better than the S4 for the most part. Sure, it doesn’t have the whole task manager portion down to exact nth detail, but it still is functional. Try using the Z10 with no physical buttons? It has weird gestures.

Blkegk

I hoping for a HTC HD2 all over again. Make it happen captain.

DannyB2

I’m sure OEMs are just thrilled, just THRILLED I tell you at the very idea of handing Microsoft a new 21st century monopoly the way IBM handed them one in 1980. Then the phone OEMs could look forward to scraping by on razor thin margins, just like the PC OEMs did for a long time.

But . . but . . . you say Android is already a monopoly. Nonsense. Android is open source. Anyone can, and some (Amazon, Archos, Nubi, others) have put Android on their devices without any involvement of Google. The only control Google has over OEMs is Google’s apps (Play Store, Maps, YouTube, Google+, etc). Furthermore, as long as an OEM is willing to agree to certain terms, they can get Google’s apps on their Android devices.

Timothy Anderson

I really don’t get the point of this dual boot with windows. Do they really think that will be a selling point? Here, we just added this extra OS on here for you. Now you can switch back and forth with total feature overlap. Please don’t sell this to my mom. It would confuse her and I would be on the phone forever.

droi_d

Didn’t MS just buy Nokia? What their hardware is not good enough?

http://WINDOWSPHONE.com/ BRUU™

MSFT doesn’t want to rely on just one hardware maker,they want more and more to saturate the market

droi_d

Ahhh, and I thought they wanted to be like Apple.

http://WINDOWSPHONE.com/ BRUU™

The more the better

http://WINDOWSPHONE.com/ BRUU™

I think this is a good idea..
Cut the fee in half, dual boot htc phones,there’s nothing wrong trying as long as they do it right.
and if htc continues to loose money,msft should buy them too..SATURATE THE MARKET!

themuffinman75

Microsoft shouldn’t have any incentive to buy any android oem being that they are already making a killing off of royalties from every android oem. As a matter of fact MS is making way more money on android than they are on their own windows phone.

http://WINDOWSPHONE.com/ BRUU™

I agree with you dude, HTC is going the drain, MSFT can leave em alone!

rabidhunter

That will be interesting to see how they do a dual boot phone. Lame ideas: Upon initial boot of the phone, you choose either Android or Windows and phone is stuck on that OS unless factory reset. Also lame if phone can switch back and forth between OS on the fly, BUT runs primaraly on Windows and when it is switched to Android it’s always a fresh boot. Best idea for this phone is to allow seemless transition between the two OS’s where you pick up where you left off.

Danny Lewis

If I had to guess, I would hope they would ask you which OS to during the first time you turn it on and not unless you factory reset the device. Next, to switch to a different OS, each OS would have an app or a setting to allow you to go into the other OS and the phone will continue to boot the last OS you selected unless you tell it otherwise.

Thomas Decker

My wife has a Lumia 521. I’ve played around with it a few times and for a very cheap phone ($119 no contract) it’s slick as snot…..fast, responsive, and the Windows interface is pretty nice. Had they gotten something like this to the market 3 or 4 years ago, they might be a serious contender in the mobile market……

Mark

Great idea. It is a good compromise by MS since they are having trouble getting people to fully commit to a new ecosystem. Also, the death of blackberry will leave a void for those looking for a robust enterprise phone. I’d consider buying this. It would almost a lock if I could get a stock vanilla experience on the Android half.

Jason Parr

I kind of wonder if Microsoft sees these hardware OEMS struggling as a way to eventually acquire them……. If you control the competition, you have no competition.

EarlyMon

Bingo.

Delmar

This would actually be pretty cool, I always did want to try windows phones out but, not leave android.

jason98

So you want say 90% of your phone’s SSD space used by dual OSes?

Delmar

Obviously it would find a way to make it work

CerealFTW

Microsoft, please don’t take HTC down with you. the android handsets are popular because of android NOT just hardware

chris_johns

I like this idea…and would be interested in a device like this…seemless intergration with my home pc when i want it and android when i want my android fix…if you could switch seamlessly…they could make no physical buttons n windows can pull an android and have the software buttons on the bottom

ChicagoBob

I guess after the MotoX comments that Android doesnt use more than single thread and basically all app developers dont know how to use more than a single thread etc. Maybe Android needs some HEAT to step up the game and make a more compelling faster and more efficient OS.

EarlyMon

Who told you that Android doesn’t use more than one thread and apps don’t either?

That’s not close to true, various free system monitors on the Play Store can prove that to you very quickly.

ThaSik1

Just gonna throw this out there, but that render up above is pretty hawt! lol on another note, I’m not opposed to dual booting..not super interested in Windows phone, but having the option to boot into it to test drive it would not be something I’m opposed to.

Bart Burroughs

ok, let me get this straight, Microsoft wants to use up another 4 GB of storage space on HTC phones and wants buyers to be forced to decide between OS at initial boot? So they would be ok with desktop PC’s having OSX or Linux as an option on first boot after you buy them? Don’t people already decide which OS to run before they buy the phone without wasting storage space? Come On MS try building something people want instead of trying to force your way in, that worked 20 years ago but not today.

malcmilli

i don’t see it as a bad thing, its not forcing anything, some people love dual boot capabilities. The HD2 was quite popular because of that. Plus not everyone is as storage-centric as the techies are. 32 gb or 64 gb is more than enough for majority of users, that’s why the cheaper lower storage option is usually the highest selling model of any handset, even the ones without SD cards. So i don’t think the 4gb is really that much of an issue.

Bart Burroughs

I have 16GB on my DNA so I don’t fall into your “techie” crowd that needs more than 64GB of storage. As I stated above, As soon as Microsoft creates a Nokia that dual boots Android I will say, “Go for it HTC, The more the merrier”…. can you guess which of these things will never happen?

malcmilli

yeah, besides i think internal storage will be moving to 32gb next year for most base models. It already is that case right now for newly released devices without SD cards, if im not mistaken

HeatFan441

Step 1: Get more apps.
Step 2: More updates.
Step 3: More choices than HTC and Nokia.
Step 4: Make a relevant OS.
Step 5: Market it at a fair price.
Step 6: Innovate as much as possible.

See, I can do better than Balmer if he has input into Windows Mobile.

Alois

You can run Android, dont hate Windows.

HeatFan441

It’s not hating Windows. I am being objective. If I hated it, I would say “it would be the worst thing ever invented or Ballmer can go jump off a cliff. ” The most common knock against Windows Mobile is the lack of apps, which people buy phones for. Android gets that knock occasionally. Updates are not too big on Windows Mobile. Android and Apple products tend to see more major updates throughout the life of the phone. Most Windows Mobile phones I see are HTC or Nokia. Where’s the LG Windows phone or Sony one? The OS hardly eats up a market share, which makes it pale in comparison to Android and iOS. I wouldn’t pay a top tier cell phone rate for the Nokia Lumia 1020, a camera is not worth it to me at that rate. $49 or $99 yes, since it is running last year’s tech. Innovation is not seen through Windows Mobile. What exclusives that Windows Mobile has that are innovative and well renowned? I cannot think of anything. See, I explained myself and I didn’t use fiction to slander a product.

Alois

I had Windows 7,5 :P I couldnt stay with it cause it has what you described and a lot worse than now. But if you can choose between those 2, whenever you want, its ok

Bart Burroughs

I have no issue with windows phone, I have an issue of wasting space on my phone and Microsoft trying to get market share by piggy backing on a successful OS. Create something people want and they will buy it, stay off my Android phone. If the roles were reversed you know MS would be crying foul. How about this? why not create a dual boot Nokia?

Chris H

I like the colors…

h4rr4r

What a great way to totally kill HTC. If they are dumb enough to not learn from nokia, they deserve it.

Alois

They will not use only Windows, you can also run Android, so what is Wrong? In my country a lot of people would like this option :0

h4rr4r

It will add substantial cost to test, port software and HTC could not put senseUI on WP. I doubt the people of your country would want to pay the extra cost.

Shawn_Locke

As much as I dislike HTC, I’d buy it.
And I know I’m not the only one.

blest

Microsoft is going to lock that phone down so hard.

chuckles87

Or here’s an idea ms do it with one of your Nokia phones and maybe you will sell a crap load of them.

EarlyMon

Add a whole OS of bloat for an OS they don’t like to a locked phone? Why?

They already sunk Nokia by sending in their little quisling who managed it into the ground.

How to buy the next company?

Let’s see – who had management dumb enough to build a Facetime phone?

JPB

I’d buy it but I have to have to option to erase the OS I don’t want altogether to free up the space.

Astridax

Surely you’d also want a way to redownload the OS you nuked right?

JPB

Maybe. Maybe not. It depends on how useful l find it.

And don’t call me “Shirley”.

johnblack86

That made me laugh

Astridax

Don’t call me Shirley? I’ll admit, I had to Google that one. Way before my time xD!

EarlyMon

That would involve being able to erase system software behind a locked bootloader.

Which is easy to unlock at HTCdev.com provided you want to void your warranty.

Who wants to go first on that?

Jarl

not going to happen

EnX$$

everyone wants two phones in one HTC make it happen but with a 13mp camera

BigCiX

I’m all for it

TechGuy22

EWWW.

Jay

I wouldn’t be opposed to this but they still have bigger fish to fry

Jarl

hell no

DannyB2

I am not in favor of these dual OS phones. Microsoft will want this
just to ride the coat tails of Android success so that they can tout
that there are hundreds of millions of phones running Windows Phone 8
OS — even if nobody uses the Windows part of the phone.

Jarl

and it will be a waste of storage on the phone
which you very probably won’t be able to reclaim, because microsoft will demand that people won’t be able to delete their crap (as if we’re not plagued enough by locked bootloaders)
I will NEVER buy a dual boot phone, there’s simply no reason to have one

Devin McBride

Thats really funny. I hadn’t thought of it – I bet you are exactly right that it is simply for market share claims.

np6s4x

i’d use it, with the recent mentions of tablets dual boot android and windows, makes sense that there could be a phone the does something similar (haven’t had much time with windows phone so no idea how it actual compares)

SBaka

Google would never go for this. Why should they go out on a limb to help Microsoft? Is Microsoft going to help the chrome OS integration into the market? Google won’t even let them make a YouTube app. Why would they help them sell more phones?

Face it Microsoft is losing money. Computer sales are down because of tablets and phones, Windows 8 is horrible, IE is only used in 14% of computers (chrome 53.4%), and they are having trouble selling phones. Seems like Gates and Ballmer got out at the right time.

I owned a windows phone 3.5 yrs ago. I had the phone replaced 8 times and changed the battery 13 times. (The phone crashed on a daily basis.) They helped put Palm out of business and they will do the same to Nokia.

Aiden

Not sure Google would have any say in this matter. They don’t control any OEM other than Motorola. If HTC wants to make another Windows Phone then they can do it all they want.

SBaka

They could pull app support for the phone

DannyB2

I agree Google could try to exclude Microsoft, but that opens them up to Microsoft crying “anticompetitive”. Of course, if Microsoft does that, it works both ways: why can’t OEMs put Android on Windows phones.

I am not in favor of these dual OS phones. Microsoft will want this just to ride the coat tails of Android success so that they can tout that there are hundreds of millions of phones running Windows Phone 8 OS.

James George

A nice way for consumers to try out another operating system relatively risk free, but a horrible waste of storage space. Especially on the gems without SD slots.

Add better and replaceable batteries, expandable storage. And maybe I’d go back. I was a believer in HTC until they decided to go the iPhone path of non replaceable batteries and no SD card slot.

gucci

Why do you comment on every article with this, faggot.

androidscales

windows is the worst os ms keeps repacking Kin

Toron James

Use on the complain idiot, WP is awesome, Android since ICS 4.0 and iOS 7 are copying it.

gucci

They know Nokia is rubbish, so they want HTC’s hardware

http://robert.aitchison.org raitchison

Not sure if I like this dual boot implementation but in general I love the idea of letting people buy whatever phone (hardware) they want then let them run whatever OS they want on it.

http://www.androidrootz.com/ Anuj Patel

I’m fine the idea as long as you can delete Windows whenever you want :D!

No_Nickname90

Let this come to the HTC One Maxx, or some HTC tablet. That would be nice. Hmm…

But I haven’t used Windows Phone 8.

Yuan Taizong

This would be great, the superior SkyDrive, Outlook.com, Xbox and Bing integration in Windows Phone 8 makes a great combination with a better search engine and mail-provider on awesome hardware, I really hope H.T.C. will make this happen, my old H.T.C. Windows Phone 8X could use an upgrade.

julianndimare321

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